


The Voice of the Sky

by ktyxdovahkiin



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls Online, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Dragonborn (Elder Scrolls), Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Jurgen Windcaller - Freeform, Poetry, Stories To Save Lives, Storytelling, Voice of the Sky, Way of the Voice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 10:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17507303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktyxdovahkiin/pseuds/ktyxdovahkiin
Summary: My love letter to all fanfiction writers everywhere.This poem is adapted from and inspired by 2 wonderful poems: "Ceasefire" (Michael Longley) and "The Lemon Trees" (Eugenio Montale). "The Lemon Trees" in particular is one of the most beautiful poems ever written.





	The Voice of the Sky

Put in mind of her own mother and moved to tears,  
The Stormcloak took her by the hand and pushed the old woman  
Gently away, but Angeline Morrard curled up at her feet and  
Wept with her until their sadness filled the building.

Taking Fura’s corpse into her own hands the Stormcloak  
Made sure it was washed and, for the old woman’s sake,  
Laid out in uniform, ready for Angeline to transport  
Wrapped like a present home to Solitude at daybreak.

When they had eaten together, it pleased them both  
To stare at each other’s beauty as lovers might,  
The Stormcloak young and strong, Angeline good-looking still  
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

“I make of my grief a gift to you, O soldier,  
And kiss the hand of the woman who killed my daughter.”

Hear me a moment. Valorous warriors  
Seem to lose themselves in stories of battles  
No one knows - one against many, blazes of glory -  
In which nothing is alive to touch.  
I prefer a small street leading  
Away from the great gates where a girl,  
Selling flowers and shivering in the wind,  
Might hear a kind word and find a home.  
The little path that winds through  
The ancient city’s shaded ways  
Until suddenly, the rooftops end  
And open into the piercing grey  
Of the Sky that Speaks.

Do I not also hear the thrill in your blood?  
Qahnaarin I am called; I too have known the joy  
Of a battle hard-fought, of the beating heart  
Thirsty for victory, of the plunge  
Of steel into flesh, of the breaking of shields,  
The splintering of arrows, the thunder of war drums;  
Flights of dragons I have called into battle,  
The storm’s fury I have worn as my crown.  
In my ears rang the cheers of thousands who conquered,  
Even as thousands more wept  
Who trembled in fear and died in despair.

Perhaps it is better  
If the Daedric axes and Dragonplate helms  
Were set down, and put aside somewhere;  
More real to one who listens:  
The murmur of tender words of care  
To a stranger in need.  
The heart is graced with the fullness  
Of a kind and friendly gaze.  
It is like rain in a troubled breast,  
Sweet as an air that arrives  
Too suddenly and vanishes.  
Preferable, perhaps, are the tales of unlikely love  
And strange but good couplings!  
The cat lies down with the lizard,  
Light-skinned hands fumble with a dark-skinned bosom,  
One lonely man finds another, and their loneliness is joined  
Together until it is no more,  
Or a woman smiles as she marries the wife of her heart!  
Every little story you write is magic.  
The true miracles are hushed - even the poor  
May sing of that richness,  
When they listen, and hear the Voice of the Sky.

Jurgen Windcaller realized that in the Silence  
Lies the unutterable knowledge  
Of the truth.  
The Seventeen Disputants half-expected  
To discover an error in Mundus,  
A breaking point of reality,  
Where they may crudely give Voice  
To their tangled threads of thought  
And speak their own missing truths.

But we look up - our minds seek,  
Make harmonies, fall helplessly  
Into the deep blue void, expand  
As one with the Great Forever.  
In the Sky is the Silence in which one hears  
In every soaring soul  
Something heavy let go.

The illusion wanes, and in time  
We return to the noisome tales  
Of cities and bloody sieges,  
Men and fragile honor,  
Discontented wanderers hungry for a destiny  
To call their own.  
The blue appears only in fragments  
High up among the towering spires.  
The world shrinks and becomes simple  
And tedious, problems seeming to vanish  
With the sweep of a sword  
Or a gratuitous blade in the dark.  
The soul grows still and bitter,  
Wrapped in its own misery.

Yet, one day, when the heart opens  
And you should chance to look up,  
You hear the nearness of the vast beyond;  
And your heart melts,  
And a golden song pours forth,  
And silver laughter swirls about you,  
And within, you hear  
The Voice of the Sky.


End file.
